Page 27 - EW-June-2024

THEY SAID IT

“At the very least, the result pricks the
bubble of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
authority. He made this election about
himself: His performance, his omnipotence
and omniscience, and his ideological
obsessions. Modi is, for the moment, not the
indomitable vehicle for History, or the deified
personification of the people. Today, he is just
another politician, cut to size by the people.”
Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice-chancellor of Ashoka
University, on General Election 2024 results in which
the BJP did not win a majority in its own right (Indian
King George’s Medical University, Lucknow: heaviest penalty Express, June 4)

Hindu University has been slapped with a Rs.12 lakh pen-
alty. NMC has provided all errant colleges a time window “Voters have sent an unmistakable
of two months to set things right. message that India is not going to become
According to monitors of higher education in Lucknow, a saffronised fiefdom of the BJP. Communal
rules-breaking and scams are rife in medical education hate speech has not won votes. Dissent and
in UP. “While inspecting medical colleges, I have come media criticism, muzzled n the last five years,
across the very same patients in attached hospitals of two will no longer be easily tamed. It is a victory
medical colleges. Teaching faculty is also shuffled between for all fundamental values of a democracy.”
colleges to show minimum numbers when inspectors ar- Swaminathan Aiyar, reputed economist and columnist,
rive. Even when a college is granted full recognition, half on General Election 2024 results (The Economic
of the faculty is made up of visiting lecturers — all vio- Times, June 4)
lations of minimum numbers prescribed by NMC,” says
Shugar Lal, retired superintendent of a Lucknow hospi- “India’s swelling GDP and its new status as
tal, and member of the former MCI task forces despatched
to evaluate colleges prior to their being granted permis- the world’s fifth largest economy have been
sion to introduce new courses. closely tracked by soaring unemployment,
According to Mridula Singh, director at the KNS which has risen from 3.2 percent to 7.6
Memorial Institute of Medical Sciences, Barabanki, a ma- percent since 2013. This contrast reflects
jor problem of medical colleges in the state is recruitment the gulf between the benefits of Modi’s
of adequately qualified faculty. “Getting teachers is a huge economics for the rich and poor.”
challenge for all medical colleges in the state. Medical col- Anastasia Piliavsky, senior lecturer, India Institute at
leges are so badly managed that graduates immediately King's College London in an essay titled ‘Back to
migrate to other states, if not abroad. Moreover, faculty practical Hinduism’ (Times of India, June 4)
in medical colleges require postgrad qualifications. But
capacity in UP’s medical colleges for postgrad education “Indian democracy can now breathe easy.
is 3,521 seats, which is totally inadequate,” says Singh.
Academics and medical practitioners are skeptical The core values of the Constitution, which
about the Rs.2-20 lakh fines levied on medical colleges for came under severe stress in the past 10
infringement of NMC rules and regulations because they years, now stand well-protected. The BJP’s
are a mere slap on the wrist. In private medical colleges, politics of communal polarisation which
the tuition fee per student for the MBBS programme is looked invincible has been held in check...
between Rs.10-14 lakh per year. For them, penalties of the verdict is for change. But the way to read
Rs.2-5 lakh are small potatoes. the outcome of the 2024 elections is to see
Therefore the general expectation is that the fines im- that change has come wearing the deceptive
posed by NMC will be paid with ritual grumbling. After mask of continuity.”
that it will be business as usual. Sudheendra Kulkarni, aide to former prime minister Atal
Vidya Pandit (Lucknow)
Bihari Vajpayee (The Hindu, June 4)

JUNE 2024 EDUCATIONWORLD 27